Announcing even more ways to automate your complex PIM workflows grade

Managing complex PIM workflows just got easier and smarter! We’re pleased to announce the release of a new automation trigger: “Linked Entity Updated.” This trigger allows you to set-up rules that assign work to your team not only when a specific product is updated, but also when there is a change to anything linked to that product.

With this new trigger, you’ll be able to increase efficiency and productivity in your PIM workflows and reduce errors in your product information by keeping all of your teams informed when relevant changes are made to data across your PIM.

Entities: The building blocks of your data model

You’ll already know that entities are the building blocks of the inriver PIM. An entity can be anything from a product, variant, or Channel to information about an individual media resource/asset such as an image. Entities are linked together in whichever ways make sense for your business, creating your unique data model.

Let’s look at a simple example: A brand selling cellphones may have the following in their PIM:

• A product entity for each model of handset which is linked to...
• Several item entities for the different colors of that handset
• Separate product entities for relevant accessories (charging cables, plugs)
• Multiple product entities for different models of compatible protective case

Each of these entities may also be linked to many different resource entities: the images and videos that bring them to life on the digital shelf and help consumers make buying decisions.

It’s easy to see how a change to any one of these many liked entities could impact the accuracy of the product information for the others. Keeping track of all these linkages becomes a significant challenge – especially on an enterprise scale!

Automating workflows with the new Linked Entity Updated trigger

With the new “Linked Entity Updated” trigger, the brand in our example can now configure their PIM to automatically assign the cellphone product to their product marketing team for review when:

• Any of the linked images is updated
• Any of the attributes for any of the linked accessories are adjusted

This helps them to make sure the description, attributes and imagery for the main product are still accurate.

Using the new trigger within your complex workflows

Now let’s consider how the new trigger can be used with a few different Entity Types within the PIM. Here’s where your complex workflows will really benefit from the new trigger with increased efficiency that saves time and further reduces manual notifications in your business.

In our example cellphone brand, the product marketing team needs to be alerted to approve the images for their latest model once all the assets have been added to the PIM by a separate photography team. A workflow assignment is created for each product onboarding step, such as: all images added, all video added, all translations added, product approved etc. Each assignment is linked to the overall product.

With the new trigger, it’s now easy to configure an automated workflow that assigns the product (not just the individual images) to the product marketing team for review as soon as the assignment all images added has been marked as complete by the photography team. The approval process is streamlined. The product marketing team knows exactly when it’s time for them to go to work.

Keeping you in control – highly configurable workflows

With potentially thousands of entities linked to an individual product, it’s important to note that you remain in control over when workflows are triggered, and when they’re not.

Within the workflow configuration tool, your workflow creators (either inside your company or from your implementation partner) have granular control. When creating a workflow, you can select the types of links and specific fields that should be monitored for change. You can also configure qualification rules. For example, the workflow may be triggered only if the task status is set to “Complete” and the task priority is set to “High.” In this scenario, a completed but low priority task would not trigger the workflow.

Ready to get started with workflows or expand your usage?

The Linked Entity Updated trigger is now available to all inriver customers and partners already using workflows. This latest step in our rolling program of enhancements to workflows has been prioritized on request from several inriver customers and partners. Thank you to everyone who submitted a request for this functionality via the ideas portal and to our partners who helped us to test it in. We are excited to hear how you’re using this new trigger to expand your usage of workflows and efficiently manage your PIM processes.

If you have questions about how to use this new trigger, please contact your Customer Success Manager or the Success Desk for details.

You can learn more about workflows in this article.